


hey little songbird

by cacowhistle



Series: ad astra per aspera [11]
Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Character Study, Family Dynamics, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Consensual Touching, like a lot of hurt, not in the sexual way bc ew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 10:22:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29997936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cacowhistle/pseuds/cacowhistle
Summary: Wilbur Soot would say he is Orpheus, the poet who ventures into the darkness for his loved ones. What he doesn't realize, however, is that he is his own Eurydice--the songbird cast down into the darkness, his singing choked to silence one too many times.Wilbur Soot is alive again. It's not all it's cracked up to be, but he'll take what he can get.or;an ad astra per aspera wilbur soot character study, mixed with a bit of plot and worldbuilding :]
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Wilbur Soot, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade, Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: ad astra per aspera [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060727
Comments: 23
Kudos: 156





	hey little songbird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zannolin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zannolin/gifts).



> tw: non-consensual touching, not in a sexual way it's just creepy and gross regardless.

_How’s your memory today, Wil?_

How is it? He doesn’t bloody well know, does he? If you had forgotten something, would you know you’d forgotten it? The only reason he knows it’s bad today is because he can’t recall Sally’s face, and _oh,_ that’s fucking _awful._ Her voice is as clear as day, the way she would sing and pick Fundy up off the ground and swing him around in a bear hug and her laughter, it’s clear as the sun in the sky and Wilbur _can’t remember her face._

“It’s fine,” he says to Tommy, hands trembling, and it’s another lie to add to the list.

* * *

Wilbur Soot died with a smile on his face. That much, the others can infer.

What they cannot infer, and what he will never tell them, is that he did so much more than merely ask his father to do the deed.

 _Phil, kill me,_ he had murmured, and Phil had done so.

The others do not understand it, and Wilbur will make sure that they never will.

Because he knows. He remembers the golden honeydrip of Eden’s sunsets in his veins and the golden shine in his eyes and the sweet siren-song tone of his voice as he’d whispered, shouted, raged, _begged,_ over and over again-- _Phil, kill me,_ and his voice did not leave room for disobedience.

Wilbur was the sweetest thing in the wreckage of that country in his last breaths, all late-summer lilacs with his last words, begging with the voice of a broken siren to be killed.

What could Phil have done, other than fulfill his son’s final request?

 _Everything,_ says those who were not there, those who did not hear the way Wilbur _said it._

 _Nothing,_ says Wilbur, with a knowing gleam in his eye and the sweet, singsong timbre of paradise in his voice, _nothing at all._

* * *

Wilbur isn’t quite sure what he expects when he opens the door after an unfamiliar knock.

He just knows it wasn’t this: Fundy, covered in blood and trembling in the cold.

There’s a moment where they just stand there, father and son, staring at each other--Wilbur wide-eyed, Fundy with his eyes half-lidded from exhaustion, but a sense of surprise and terror in them. Wilbur takes an unsteady step back from the door, reaching forward to usher Fundy into the house.

“Come sit,” he says, voice hoarse, nudging his son into a chair at the kitchen table.

Fundy does so without a word, just staring at Wilbur. His ears twitch, flattening a bit--one is ragged and torn, Wilbur notes. It reminds him of the first time Fundy got into a fight, when he was smaller--he and Tommy had taken on some Dream SMP kids who were a bit stronger than them, and had come home bloodied and bruised. They’d been far chattier, though, and Wilbur’s stomach churns at the sight of Fundy’s blood-matted fur. This is far worse than any schoolyard scuffle.

“What happened?” He asks, voice soft as he retrieves healing potions and a towel, before crossing to the fireplace and putting a pot of water above it. He should get a comb, too, he thinks, noting the tangled patches of fur.

… Fundy doesn’t look too great, even underneath the wounds, truth be told.

The shapeshifter in question hums, absently. “Got into a fight.”

“This feels like more than _a fight,”_ Wilbur murmurs, pouring some of the warm water into a bowl before crossing back to the table, setting it down beside Fundy’s arm, resting on the table.

“You’re alive,” Fundy finally croaks instead. Wilbur pauses, damp towel hovering over Fundy’s torn ear.

He lets out a shaky breath, and begins to clean the wound as gently as he can. “... yeah, I am.”

“Why didn’t you--” Fundy’s breath hitches. He’s shaking. “Why didn’t you come back?”

 _You left me_ goes unspoken. It hangs in the air around them, they both know how badly Fundy wants to say it. Wilbur’s hands shake as he continues to wipe away blood, trying to find the right words to say. None particularly come to mind. Fundy shakes more, if that were somehow possible, and Wilbur drops the towel on the table and gathers his son into his arms, not caring about the blood for the moment. Fundy clings back, claws digging through his shirt and into his back and Wilbur doesn’t care, doesn’t care about the blood and the tears staining his front, just hugs his son tight to his chest.

“I love you,” he whispers into Fundy’s fur, pressing their foreheads together and closing his eyes, “I love you more than there are stars in the sky, than--than fish in the ocean, I never stopped and I never will, Fundy, I will love you for as long as I keep breathing and--and then some.”

His voice breaks. None of it is explicitly an apology, but Fundy reads it as one anyway.

“I missed you,” Fundy says, voice small. Wilbur pulls back, rests his hands on his shoulders.

“I’m ready to try again if you are. If you’ll let me,” he murmurs.

Fundy stares at a point past Wilbur’s shoulder, takes a deep, steadying breath. “I… I’m willing to give you a shot.”

Wilbur blinks back tears, pulls his son into his arms again. “That’s all I ask.”

Quietly, they set to work cleaning Fundy up. Wilbur wipes away the blood, takes care not to irritate the wounds further. He wraps and bandages the messy cuts he finds, disinfects the new notch in Fundy’s ear, washes and brushes the fur around the wounds slowly and carefully before bandaging them all the way.

He wonders, faintly, how any of this happened--Fundy wasn’t this injured in the fight a few days prior, and these all look fairly recent. He doesn’t want to prod, however, and eventually sends his son to bed in his own room for the night after cobbling together some stew and some water for him.

When Phil and the other two get home, Wilbur is quick to shush them, careful with how he divulges the information. Softly, he tells Techno and Tommy about the situation. Tommy seems cautious, but accepts it with little complaint. Techno does not go as gently.

“You can’t just bring more people into our house,” he murmurs, voice low and urgent. “And he tried to _kill me,_ if you forgot--”

“Techno, please,” Wilbur pleads, softly, “I can’t fuck this up again.”

It’s a long argument. Ultimately, he allows Fundy to stay.

Phil is going to be the most difficult. The man holds grudges, Wilbur knows, and resents his grandson for the things he’s done.

“He tried to kill Techno,” Phil hisses, “did you just _forget?”_

Wilbur is startled by the fact that he doesn’t flinch, at that. “No,” he says, quietly, calmly, “I didn’t. I couldn’t leave him out there. He was hurt, Phil.”

Phil groans, rubbing his face. “You’ve always cared too fuckin’ much.”

“Sorry for not wanting to abandon my fucking son,” Wilbur snaps, voice low and dangerous, “like _someone_ I know. Techno said he could stay, so he’s staying. If you’re gonna have a problem with it, take it up with Techno.”

Phil stares at him for a moment, gaze unreadable. Ultimately, it softens.

“I just worry,” he murmurs.

“Fundy won’t hurt any of us,” Wilbur says in return, short and clipped, “not on his own.”

“If you’re sure,” Phil says, softly.

Wilbur has never been more sure of anything in his life.

* * *

Wilbur remembers an afternoon, a long time ago, when he and Phil had spoken about lifespans.

_“You’re probably gonna outlive people, mate,” Phil murmurs, staring out over the icy peaks of the Empire._

_Wilbur hums, leaning against his shoulder. “So?”_

_A wing wraps around his shoulders, tugs him closer to Phil’s side. He cards a hand through Wilbur’s hair, who hums low in his throat, a pleased little purr. Phil sighs, softly._

_“I see how much you like people, Wil. You love humanity. And that’s a beautiful thing, but for beings like us, it’s dangerous.” Phil stares out at the open tundra beyond the mountain. “... caring is dangerous.”_

_“I think it’s worth it,” Wilbur says, softly, and Phil just smiles, sad._

_“It can be. But just know, you’re going to have to let go and lose people, some day. And it’s going to hurt worse than anything you could ever believe.” Phil raises his eyebrows. “I see how close you’ve gotten with Schlatt. He’s a mortal man, Wilbur.”_

_“I dunno,” Wilbur murmurs, and the two of them look out over the city, “people are full of surprises.”_

How funny is it, that everyone he’s ever loved has technically outlived him, instead? Save Schlatt, perhaps, every person he’s ever loved had to mourn him, grieve him and his existence, instead of the other way around.

They hadn’t even really mourned him, part of him thinks. They were glad to see him go.

_(Technoblade avoids ravines like they’re the plague, these days.)_

He didn’t even get a grave.

_(He sees the way Tommy looks at him in the morning, sometimes, like he’s the monster that haunts his nightmares.)_

He deserves that, he thinks.

_(Phil doesn’t use swords anymore, when he can avoid it.)_

* * *

“Techno,” Wilbur says one day, flopping down on the bed in the loft.

Techno, sitting cross legged with a book in his lap and Steve half-asleep by his side, groans and sets the book on the bedside table. “Wilbur.”

“I need to talk to you about Tommy.” Wilbur leans forward, ruffling behind Steve’s ears. The bear grunts, softly, nuzzling further into the touch.

That earns a confused grunt as Techno sits up a bit further, brow furrowing with concern.

“What?”

Wilbur hums, carding a hand through Steve’s fur, nervously evading Techno’s gaze. “I think he’s started hearing the voices. I don’t know what to do.”

As if on cue, the low-set murmuring of Caedis picks up. Techno frowns, faintly. “What we always do? Protect him.”

Wilbur sighs, slumping against Techno’s shoulder. “Well, yeah, obviously, but--he’s not going to _talk_ to us about it, and I just--what if he ends up doing stupid shit and gets hurt, because of it?”

“Well, that’s just Tommy,” Techno deadpans, “we can’t exactly stop him from being stupid and getting hurt.”

“You,” Wilbur says, petulant, “are not helping.”

Techno shrugs. “Sorry.”

That just earns another sigh, and Wilbur buries his face in Techno’s shoulder. He grimaces, shifting a bit--he ought to change his bandages, sooner rather than later. He’ll ask Wilbur to help, in a bit.

“What’s she like?” Wilbur asks, out of the blue. “Caedis, I mean.”

“You were _literally_ possessed by her on multiple occasions, Wilbur, how do you not know what she’s like.”

He snorts, lacing their hands together. Techno begrudgingly allows it, if only because he remembers how Wilbur’s eyes had looked, pitch black and cruel. His hand is warm in Techno’s, not icy and lifeless in his grasp. He squeezes it a bit, and Wilbur squeezes back.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but my memory’s been a little _spotty,_ Technoblade.” He leans his head against Techno’s shoulder again.

Techno grunts, softly. “Well. She’s like a big snake who could kill you at any given moment, traditionally. And also happens to be a timeless being of blood and war. Um. It’s basically violence, but bass-boosted, and usually in the form of a woman.”

“None of that helps explain it.” Wilbur pats Techno’s shoulder. “But she sounds like a handful.”

“Just be glad I’m the one that went looking for trouble, as far as blood gods go,” Techno says, teasing. Wilbur snorts.

“Where would we be without our mighty protector, Technoblade?”

Techno grins. “Dead in a ditch, probably.”

Wilbur barks a laugh, elbowing him lightly. “Oh, fuck off.”

“Just don’t get into any trouble,” Techno says, gruff and amused, “and you’ll be fine without me.”

* * *

Wilbur, of course, does not listen.

It’s not supposed to go this way.

“Tommy,” Wilbur gasps, crossbow aimed at Dream, “don’t listen to him--”

“Wilbur.” Dream’s eyes are dark, beyond the mask. “Put the crossbow down.”

Tommy, frozen where he stands, flicks his gaze from Wilbur to Dream, then back again. His axe materializes in his hand, shoulders tense as he stares at Dream, who just cocks his head and smiles, gently. It only makes the two of them tense up further, shooting each other terrified glances. Tommy reaches for Wilbur’s hand, and Wilbur squeezes it in return.

“Don’t lay a fucking hand on him,” Wilbur hisses out past the fear, tugging Tommy closer to his side.

Dream snorts. “That’s the thing you’re not getting--I don’t _need_ to.”

He removes his mask, a new, messy scar--claw marks--running from his left eyebrow to his jaw. His eyes are a bright, unnatural green, cold and devoid of any love or care. No matter what Wilbur does, Dream’s eyes don’t move off of Tommy.

It’s beginning to piss him off.

He reaches for the summersong of Eden, and speaks: “Tell me what you did to Tubbo.”

“I put him in the prison,” spills out of Dream’s mouth like water from a leaky faucet, “on account of the fact that he was working with you guys. Figured it would be easy to get him out of the way while still keeping him alive for later.”

He grins, then, slow and awful like Wilbur used to. “How many times do I have to tell you not to do that?”

“You say that,” Wilbur says, mockingly delicate, “like I give a fuck about what you tell me to do.”

Dream blinks, and for a moment his eyes go golden-- _just like Wilbur’s,_ some part of Tommy thinks--before he hums, low and throaty and awful.

“Tommy,” he says, sickeningly sweet, “stand right over there and let the adults talk this one out, will you?”

Tommy’s breath stutters and his hand slips from Wilbur’s grasp as he stumbles back, eyes wide and axe dangling by his side. Terror grips Wilbur’s heart with her ironclad claws and he grits his teeth and lifts his crossbow again.

“How are you doing that?” He snarls, taking a threatening step forward. Dream steps forward to match him.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Dream says, smiling.

He lunges forward and Wilbur fires, but the bolt hits his shoulder and does little else, Dream knocking the crossbow from his hands and twisting his arm behind him, earning a pained cry as he’s knocked down against the dirt. Wilbur grits his teeth as Dream presses a knee into his back, a hand against the back of his skull and gripping his hair so tightly it hurts. He hears Tommy shout, but from where he’s laying he can see how the kid doesn’t move, frozen with terror and magic too awful to describe, a sick mockery of the arcane that flows through Wilbur’s blood.

A cold hand slides under his shirt, and Wilbur can’t help the way he flinches, spasms at the touch.

“Get your hands off of me,” he spits, but Dream just snorts.

“What are these feathers for, anyway? You don’t have wings.” Dream tugs the back of his shirt up, and the breath leaves Wilbur all at once as the cold air hits his bare back.

“Nothing,” Wilbur snaps, “they’re just bloody decoration, what’s it to you?”

“There has to be something,” Dream croons, softly, rubbing the feathers between his fingers. Wilbur can’t help the way he shivers. “Evolutionary adaptation. Organisms adjust to their environments, develop their traits to survive. The feathers have to have a purpose, right?”

“They _don’t,”_ Wilbur grits out, trying to writhe out of Dream’s grasp. His hand just grips his hair tighter, slams him against the ground, earning a yelp from Wilbur and a shout from Tommy that he can’t quite hear.

“Get your fuckin’ hands _off’a me,”_ Wilbur snarls, and Dream just hums.

“Stay still,” Dream huffs, fingers brushing against Wilbur’s back again, and he tries to think of some way to throw him off.

At least until his vision goes white with pain.

Wilbur doesn’t realize he’s screamed until his vision clears and he registers just how much his throat hurts. A feather got ripped out. He can _tell,_ he just knows, and he starts squirming again. Dream’s fingers curl around another one, and he’s halfway through gasping out a plea before Dream rips it out and Wilbur’s entire body spasms, a keening cry coming from the back of his throat.

_“Wilbur!”_

He hears Tommy shriek, but he can’t bring himself to move. The pain dulls a bit if only because he’s begun getting used to it as another feather is ripped out. His fingers twitch, dig into the dirt, and he lets out a miserable noise into the ground. Black spots dance in his vision as Dream plants a foot on his back, but all he can do is breathe, in and out, shallow breaths that leave his chest aching. He thinks he might pass out. Another feather. He thinks he shrieks again, but he can’t quite focus enough to tell.

Half-formed pleas fall from numb lips, Wilbur’s voice slurring as he buries his face in one arm. His breathing stutters as a hand smooths over the feathers again, and he lays limp as if playing dead will save him. It doesn’t--this time, the cold edge of a blade presses against his skin, and agony courses through him as Dream swings the axe down on him. His vision blurs, again.

“Have you learned your lesson yet?” Dream murmurs, softly, and Wilbur is astonished he doesn’t throw up right then and there.

“Fuck you,” he slurs, more of a half-formed sob, breath hitching as another (now-bloody) feather gets tugged on. Thankfully, it doesn’t get torn out entirely.

“Tommy,” Dream says, voice sweet and gentle, “come here, would you?”

Wilbur hears the footsteps and the choked, horrified noise Tommy makes. He would rear up and tackle Dream to the fucking ground, if he could find the strength for it.

“Pull a feather out,” Dream says, softly, and Wilbur freezes at the feeling of a smaller hand being guided onto his back.

Tommy is silent.

Wilbur shudders, trying to tilt his head back to catch a glimpse of his brother’s face. Dream shoves his head back down, and he yelps as his face hits the dirt.

“Do it,” Dream snaps. “Just one, and then we’ll be done. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Tommy takes a shaky breath, and fury floods Wilbur’s chest. He wants to shriek and _hurt_ Dream, hurt him so badly that it’s a fate worse than dying three times. A hand presses against his back and he lets out a strangled, horrified noise, burying his face in his arm.

“Just fucking _do it,_ Tommy,” he gasps.

Another feather gets plucked.

_(He remembers, vaguely, an incident when he first met Techno and Phil. A sparring match in the garden, Techno had accidentally torn out a few feathers all at once. Wilbur nearly blacked out, he’s pretty sure. He remembers Techno calling for Phil, sounding more afraid than Wilbur had ever heard him, as Wilbur himself laid shivering and twitching on the ground._

_He hadn’t been able to sing properly for days.)_

“Good, good,” Dream praises, and Wilbur sees him ruffle Tommy’s hair out of the corner of his eye. He wants to bite that hand, wants to leave Dream a bloody, mangled mess on the ground. He can’t even move a hand, though, let alone drag himself to his feet.

“Get away from us,” Tommy breathes, and Dream steps back.

“See you soon,” he says, cheerily, and Wilbur listens to his footsteps fade.

He hears more than sees Tommy’s knees hit the dirt, and can’t bring himself to move as hands hover over his back.

“You’re bleeding,” Tommy says, numbly. Wilbur can’t help his hysteria, letting out a low, horrified giggle.

“No shit,” he says, breathless, trembling as he pushes himself into a sitting position. He feels like he’s going to be sick. His head spins and his back burns and he can taste bile and sickness on his tongue. He swallows it back, forces himself to _breathe, just breathe._

“I’m sorry.” Tommy’s voice is unusually soft. Unusually scared, too, and that hurts more than the plucked feathers.

“It’s not your fault,” Wilbur insists, voice hoarse. He spots the feathers sitting in the dirt, spattered with blood, and has to look away, take another deep breath.

“Can we go home?”

Christ, he sounds so small. Wilbur’s heart aches at the sound of it.

“Help me up,” he says, voice slurring. Tommy pulls him to his feet, slings his arm around his shoulders. Slowly, they stumble home.

Fundy greets them at the door when they get there, confusion turning to concern turning to horror, and then Wilbur’s being ushered into a chair and told to take off his (now bloodsoaked, on the back) shirt, and there’s blood crusted around a gash on his forehead and voices fluttering about the kitchen around him, and Wilbur’s just so _tired._

“Wil?” Fundy shakes his shoulder, gently, and it’s enough to jolt adrenaline through him.

He groans, softly, burying his face in his arms on the kitchen table. Tommy is saying something, he thinks, but he’s exhausted, and in pain, and his throat is killing him, so he decides he isn’t going to pay attention anymore.

At least until a hand brushes his back. Then he’s moving, snarling, words spilling from his mouth before he can remember himself, stop himself.

 _“Don’t touch me,”_ he says, the darkest parts of Eden in his voice, and pain jolts through him, laces his back and his feathers, his throat and all the way up in his sinuses, up behind his eyes, right in his temple, and blood begins to drip from his nose.

“Fucking Christ, Wil,” Phil’s voice says, breathy and horrified.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, sinking into his father’s arms as he approaches. Phil hums, softly, brushes the hair back from his face (when did the cut get cleaned up? Gods, he’s out of it).

“Can I take a look at your back?” Phil’s gentle, and Wilbur trusts him, despite everything.

He still shivers. “Okay,” he says, and Phil smiles, soft and sad.

(He almost misses the way Phil looks up at Tommy, the way they clearly are going to talk about this later, without Wilbur. About what happened. Wilbur is smart enough to know that Tommy will blame himself, take the fall. He doesn’t have the strength to argue.)

He rests his head on the table, and lets it all fade away.

* * *

“What,” Phil says, sternly, “the fuck were you thinking?”

Tommy, seated alone in the living room by the fire, doesn’t meet his eyes. Wings flutter open, black feathers blotting out the light of the fireplace. Tommy cringes, curls in on himself.

“You can’t both just sneak off without telling anyone, for one thing,” Phil snaps, “and then come back _injured,_ for Christ’s _sake,_ Tommy--”

“I’m _sorry,”_ he bites back, sinking further into the couch, pulling his legs up to his chest. “We thought we could handle it.”

“Next thing you’re gonna tell me is that you went to fight _Dream_ on your…” Phil pauses, staring at the hallway to Wilbur’s room, “... own.”

His gaze sweeps back around to Tommy.

“Tommy,” he says, dangerously calm, “who hurt Wilbur?”

Tommy smiles. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “I think you know.”

The one thing the four of them, Phil, Techno, Wilbur, and Tommy, have in common, is that they are often compared to the open flame. Dragons, explosions, massacres of the hottest, blazing kind, that is what they are. Tommy is a flame snuffed over and over again, somehow alive despite the odds. Wilbur is explosive and decorative, there to make a scene. Techno is quiet and sizzling and undetected until it’s too late, a roaring inferno that amazes and terrifies its victims in their last moments.

Phil, however, is old and long-burning, a slow fuse that takes its time to be set off. He is a sleeping dragon, waiting until the right adventurer pokes him with a large enough stick.

Tommy is the unlucky knight on the receiving end of his fire.

“I assume I don’t need to tell you why that was fucking stupid,” Phil hisses. Tommy winces.

“No,” he mumbles, looking down.

“And I assume I don’t need to tell you _not to do it again.”_

Tommy swallows. “... no.”

“Say it like you mean it, Tommy.” Phil crosses his arms.

“We _won’t,”_ Tommy breathes, curling in on himself. “I promise.”

Phil sighs, crossing to sink down onto the couch beside him, drawing Tommy in for a hug. Tommy buries himself in Phil’s arms and wings, shivering.

“It sucked,” Tommy whispers, hoarse and horrified.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Phil says, softly into Tommy’s hair.

“It’s not your fault.” _It’s never anyone’s,_ he doesn’t say.

It is a cycle of shifted blame and shouldered guilt, a game of not knowing when to stop apologizing.

If he gives up enough of himself, maybe he will atone for the atrocities he’s caused. If he gives himself away to every person he’s ever loved, if he protects them and aids them and plays the hero, maybe he can be better than his mistakes. Maybe, _maybe,_ he can know peace, if he just keeps taking the blame and the guilt and the mistakes of everyone he’s ever fought for.

He sleeps in Wilbur’s room that night. It’s another apology, of sorts.

Peace. He wonders if they’ll ever really get to know what it’s like.

 _Die like a hero,_ Techno’s voice echoes, and Tommy figures at the very least, he will fight to give it to his brothers, if he cannot have it himself.

* * *

“How’re you… feeling?” Fundy asks, cautiously, one cold morning in the kitchen.

Wilbur, with a blanket draped around his shoulders and his sweater shifting uncomfortably against the bandages around his torso, grumbles out a response that Fundy can’t quite decipher.

“I take it that means bad.” He plops down in the chair next to Wilbur, who sighs and nods, tiredly.

“Still can’t sing,” he rasps, not meeting Fundy’s gaze--just staring down into the mug in front of him on the table.

They sit there in remorseful quiet, for a few moments. Fundy gets up, snagging Wilbur’s near-empty mug as he goes past, getting to work on making more tea.

“How does that… work, exactly?” Fundy asks, gentle in his prodding. “The whole voice connected to the feathers thing.”

Wilbur shrugs. “Magic.”

Fundy snorts. “That’s not really descriptive.”

“Something about the soul and your source of magic manifesting physically, I don’t fuckin’ know. That’s like asking how do you shapeshift?”

That gives Fundy a moment of pause as he pours the water into the mugs. “... touché.”

Wilbur hums as he accepts the mug, though it’s low and rough. It’s a _thank you_ nonetheless. Fundy sinks back into his chair beside him, the two of them sitting in companionable quiet.

“What happened,” Wilbur says, softly, “the night you showed up?”

Fundy tenses, sets the mug down. His tail swishes uncomfortably behind him, and he digs his hands in, running them through the fur as if that will calm his anxiety.

“Got in a fight,” he repeats, an echo of what he’d told Wilbur before.

“Fundy,” Wilbur says, a warning and a plea all in one.

“I don’t _know,_ Wil,” Fundy rubs his eyes. “I just--I think Dream and Quackity were there? And I was all fucked up after the whole… execution thing, and I--I don’t know. I don’t remember. I was just angry and scared and then I blinked and I was here and hurt and shit.”

As if the original scenario wasn’t concerning enough on its own. Wilbur frowns, swishes the tea around in his mug. He glances up, Fundy still staring down at his hands.

“Have I ever told you,” Wilbur says, quietly, “about Caedis?”

Fundy blinks, ears flicking forward with curiosity. “No?”

Wilbur hums, hoarse and unsteady, and begins to tell him the tale.

**Author's Note:**

> ty for reading! find me over on tumblr, twitch, & twitch @ cacowhistle!


End file.
